“Hey Silvia, why haven’t you come to bed yesterday? I missed you.” Said Jake. “Didn’t want to wake you up, you were already fast asleep when I finally could tear my eyes off the window,” she said with a sheepish smile, hoping he would forgive her. “Well, there is no amends to do now,” he started frowning, “you’ve already missed the first night, the second one will not summon the miracle,” still looking serious and intently staring into her brilliant blue eyes. For a second, she truly believed that he was mad at her. They stared into each other’s eyes for a minute and then he could not take it anymore and burst into laugher. Her mouth opened agape in disbelief, followed by a “I should have known he was pranking me look”. He pressed through his laughing teeth, “love I knew you wouldn’t be able to and thank you for not waking me up. I’ve seen the sight through the window like thousand times and I still have trouble to return to my duties, how could I possibly want you to do it on your first time?” he proceeded gently. Now she has lain her big blue eyes lovingly upon him again, him still laughing, “perhaps this is why I love him so much.” He stopped laughing suddenly getting all serious again. They slowly leaned in. Her hair interwound of gold and black, perfectly shaped eyebrows, two blue diamonds completed with scarlet red rubies. Lips inch together, blue orb in the distance almost completely overshadowed. Nearing that moment of almost touching, eyes closed. Suddenly they started losing weight rapidly. Confusion and chaos. They find themselves in a swirl of items. Pupils shrunk into a solid tunnel. He sending comfort to her through the tunnel. “It will be ok, don’t worry.” Then the sirens started blasting, “all guests please find the nearest escape pod, this is an emergency. All staff are required to report to the bridge. I repeat all guests please find the nearest escape pod and wait for further instructions. All staff are required to report to the bridge.” “What is happening Jake?” her long gold-black hair spluttering all around her, even exaggerating the emergency. “He looked around,” I don’t know, but it does not look like an exercise, they would not turn off the artificial gravity so fast. There must be a real danger.” She seemed now genuinely scared. “Come on let’s put you into the nearest escape pod. It’s just outside the room.
The sirens were still blasting, and people were trying to find their way through doors of their rooms. It was difficult since the hotel was meant to operate only with artificial gravity generated by centrifugal forces of the rotating hull, wide corridors made it difficult to move through them because walls were too distant, and one could get stuck in between them. But soon people found that if formed human chains, they could move quite swiftly. “Jake, this is madness, I cannot leave without you!”, she turned to him with eyebrows tightly pressed to each other and eyes watering. “There is no other way, I have my duty to the ship. Come.” He didn’t even look at her, because it would hurt too much. They made their way against the corridor wall to the nearest pod doors, opened them. He made a glance to the opposite window where the enchanting blue orb was just passing by. “Listen Silvia, I have to tell you something. I may not return. We’ve probably were attacked by a warship,” he told intently as she was squeezing into the tight entrance of the pod. “This is not a hotel as it is presented. It is a secret troop transport intended to invade moon basses. A war is starting up between two greatest corporations. They’ve practically went rogue; they have all the power over earth not governments or people. The development of efficient and cheap space carriers made it possible to amass immense resources, no government can challenge. Moon mining allowed that. She was looking in disbelieve at him, hair flying around made it look a little comic though. “What do you mean? They are listed on stock market, people own them.” He paused for a second, “from past we, no they are not, they’ve managed somehow to pass through boards a bill allowing the major stockholders to buy newly released stock with for a minimal price. Basically, now each stockholder almost lost ownership of the companies from minute to minute and the only decision makers remained two people who are now competing for the dictatorship over the entire solar system.” For a second, they just stared at each other, “now you must go a fight is about to break out, or whatever, we don’t yet know what weapons they have.” He started to push he inside. “But wait,” she tried to resist, “on which side are you, or we? Whom can I trust and whom I cannot?” He sighed, “there is no good side, there is only the surviving side.” He again stooped to look into her brilliantly blue eyes, thinking whether he would see them again. “The corporations have been renamed to red and green. I stand by the green, because I think that they are going to win, they believe more in cooperation although ultimately there is only one ultimate ruler, but the red have a strict hierarchy of power, one that is above the other and so on, and one must not dare to challenge those above. I’ve already told you too much, nobody knows about it yet and you must not tell anybody because they would immediately mark you as an insurgent and kill you.” Now he was speaking really fast, because the halls were clearing fast, and it was obvious that the pods would deploy in a minute or two. “Public still thinks that everything is alright, their minds have been massaged to be oblivious to any danger, they will remain in lethargy, ignorant to suffering and injustice of others. You take care of yourself, do not give up, but do not hope either. Choose who you stand for and silently support. The winner will decide whether you live or perish.” He pressed her last warm kiss and pushed her with all his might into the pod, closing behind her the airlock. he could hear her sobbing and banging on the doors, but he had no time to spare. There might be and impostor on the station, so he had to be careful. The green must win, he bet his life on it.
Jake watched as the escape pods left the station, which gave it strong kick as they deployed. Sirens blasting, little blue tail disappearing in the dark blue vastness of the earth. Something broke in him. Realization he probably won’t ever see her again. He finally releases his stare form the window and clambered his way to the bridge with help of banisters lining the corridors. The crew already intently staring into bridge displays. a large transparent screen in the middle showing earth and all sorts of orbiting objects. “The ground spectators have notified us that we have been locked on by an unidentified object which just entered our exact orbit. We assume that it is the red corporation ship with spread projectiles, intended to chase use as a one solid until there is no escape and then separating into thousands of smaller one. It is a certain death to such large station as ours. We cannot change orbit fact enough to dodge them.” the captain stated with a calm voice as if nothing was happening. “Why we can’t dodge them, they are on the same orbit, it’ll take them ages to catch up to us. Their relative speed would be almost zero,” Jake retorted. “They are going in the opposite direction,” the captain finally raised his glance and pierced Jakes. He stared at him with open mouth, “then we must evacuate all crew immediately!” “Silence!” yelled the captain in a thunderous calm voice,“reform your men lieutenant, we are going to execute a dodge. Undock the habitats and power on auxiliary drives to each of them and spread them out!” Officers started furiously smashing buttons in front of them and each grabbed a joystick. A slight shudder could be felt as parts of the station undocked. On the big screen could be seen a blinking dot coming from the other side of the earth to another dot in yellow circle, which represented them and now was splitting up into thirteen individual dots. “Engage impact tracking.” Captain ordered calmly. suddenly all but the middle one dot turned from yellow to green. Also, the orbit between the enemy and yellow dot highlighted and showed a countdown of one minute and thirty seconds until the impact. “If we are lucky enough, we have split up into small enough pieces and we can slip through their projectile net.” The time continued to run. Captain wiped a cold sweat from his forehead. “First lieutenant, engage manual control of the orbit.” Jake immediately sprung up to the nearest console, pushed some buttons and held the joystick ready to change the orbit in any direction, which was no easy feat and unintuitive provided the station can turn in three axes and move in three axes. “We must wait until the last seconds because the projectiles can have tracking. You must change the orbit with full power when I say.” Forty seconds remaining until impact. The habitats were now in a sufficient distance to prevent debris from reaching the core of the station even if one of them was destroyed. Everyone waited strenuously, joysticks prepared for sudden jerk. “Twenty seconds till impact,” now with a voice absolutely detached from emotion said captain. “Fifteen, prepare to engage jerk.” On the big screen suddenly appeared hundreds of objects instead of one. Captain speedily zoomed in on them, all parts of the station shined in green. Seven seconds until impact. Everything went red. Five seconds till impact. A drop of sweat sliding ever so slowly down captain’s forehead. Three. Two. “Jerk elevation!”